Well, there was actually a concerted effort to remove magic (back in pre 1.0, in a branch aptly called "magic-removal".) The problem was that convention-over-configuration was tripping a lot of new people. It was actually the reason I decided to go with Django over Rails.

That said, I feel like nowadays Rails and Django are more or less equally capable, so choosing one over the other might be a matter of language and ecosystem preference over anything else.